1246
pages, History Book Club, ISBN-13: 978-1582882611
Have
you ever thought that you really understood something only to thereafter learned that
you didn’t understand at all? This was my experience while reading The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall
of New York by Robert Caro. The clarity and breadth of this book made me
feel as if suddenly the curtain had been thrown back to reveal the real reasons
for government actions that can appear so unreasonable to us unwashed. Don’t be daunted by the
length of this book: Caro’s exhaustive work about one of the most
politically-powerful men in 20th Century New York (who was never elected to
public office) is a page-turner and a classic story of a man acquiring power
for power’s sake.
Until
I read The Power Broker, I really had
no idea who Robert Moses was and I knew even less about urban planning, New York
City politics or public works. Caro handles the subjects so thoroughly that
the lack of familiarity mattered not at all. Moses was obviously a giant of a
man; he accomplished great things and made colossal blunders and was also a man of
great vision who was blind to the effects his policies had on the less
fortunate. The contradictions are laid out in full detail in this monster of a
book. It is hard to comprehend the work that Caro must have put into this biography;
it stands as the definitive work on Robert Moses and the textbook of urban policy
in America.
Many
readers and historians have used this book for a primer on how NOT to conduct
urban planning. Moses’ heavy hand, disdain for delays and love of the
automobile in transit-centered New York City are really only a small part of
this story. Like the title says, I think Caro really wrote a tale of a man
whose official job titles were “only” the head of the Triborough
Bridge & Tunnel Authority and the NY Parks system, but the power he wielded
shook mayors, senators and even a president or two along the way. His power
transcended political party and popular will, and only late in his career,
as he battled society women over expanding a parking lot in Central Park, did
he begin to fall from his once-untouchable pedestal. Caro emphasizes that Moses
never used power for financial wealth, and lived modestly his entire life.
The
amount of detailed research in the book is amazing: we are able to follow the
character development of Moses from his days as an idealistic civic reformer
through the transformation by which he became one the most shrewd (and venal) operators in the system he set out to reform. As the years go by, we learn that
although Moses’s energy and ambition do not wane, his ideas of urban
infrastructure design are hopelessly out of date. Furthermore, his preference
for glamorous bridges instead of more practical tunnels, and his stilting of
the mass transit system in favor of more and more expressways results in
censure from Caro. In the end, we are intended to believe that the work of
Robert Moses has become a barrier to the development of the greatest American
city.
Historians
today now look at Moses with a kinder light than Caro did in 1974, citing him
for the quality and aesthetic touches he put into many of his highways and
parks (remember, by 1974, “form follows function” reigned supreme, and all
public buildings and projects were bland, faceless monoliths of concrete and
cinderblocks). Even the oft-quoted statement that Moses deliberately designed
his parkway bridges too low to accommodate buses has been discredited by Caro
himself in later years.
Stupendous
in the scope of its research, meticulous and flowing in its prose, Caro’s
biography of Robert Moses is not only of interest to New Yorkers and students
of urban politics, but is essential reading for anyone anywhere seeking insight
into the exceptional human personality and its attendant darkness.
No comments:
Post a Comment